Centinela Valley school district loses labor case against teachers union

In a victory for the Centinela Valley teachers union and the latest blow to embattled Superintendent Jose Fernandez, the state labor board has found that the school district violated the law when it unilaterally terminated the release time granted to union presidents to conduct union business.

The Public Employment Relations Board ruling, which the district was required to make public this week, puts an end to a protracted legal battle that has been quietly raging between the Centinela Valley Union High School District and its teachers union for more than three years. The district serves four high schools in Lawndale and Hawthorne.

“So much time and money and resources were wasted over this issue,” said Sandra Goins, executive director of the South Bay United Teachers, the umbrella union for teachers for Centinela Valley and three other area school districts. “The attorneys won big on this lawsuit and this unfair labor practice charge.”

When the dispute first erupted in January of 2011, the union president was P.E. teacher Betty Setterlund, a vocal critic of the district and bitter opponent of Fernandez, who has been on leave since March pending the outcome of several internal and criminal investigations into his excessive compensation, which surpassed $663,000 last year.

“She was really outspoken about Jose Fernandez and the district,” Goins said. “We felt that (the case) was retaliation.”

However, the legal conflict with the union persisted after Setterlund was replaced by high school counselor Jack Foreman in the summer of 2011.

The aggressiveness with which the district went after the union was remarkable. In addition to revoking the release time of the union president, the district had sued the teachers union, seeking more than $312,000 to recoup what the district believed it was owed for release time taken by union presidents dating back to 2001-02.

For years, the district’s collective bargaining agreement had entitled the presidents to spend 40 percent of their time on union-related activities that included attending school board meetings, training staff, handling grievances and sitting at the bargaining table.

Union leaders believe that the legal costs incurred by the Centinela surpassed the amount the district was trying to recover.

Goins estimated that the district’s costs were as high as $800,000. Interim Superintendent Bob Cox calls that estimate “outlandish,” though he couldn’t offer a counter amount Wednesday because he was out of the state.

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In any event, representing the school district in the case was the San Francisco law firm Dannis Woliver Kelley, which racked up nearly $2.9 million in total legal fees from the district in the four years ending in November 2013.

The June 17 ruling forces the district to reinstate the release time. It also requires the district to spring for back pay to make up for all union work the presidents conducted over the three-year period — with 7 percent interest.

Elsewhere, the amount of release time granted to teacher union presidents ranges from zero to 100 percent. The variance depends on the size of the district and nature of the relationship between the administration and the union. The union presidents representing teachers in the Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach and Palos Verdes Peninsula school districts are allowed to spend 20 percent of their workdays conducting union business, said Goins, whose organization also represents teachers in those districts.

At Torrance Unified, the union president is given 10 days a year, but the costs associated with the leave — which include paying for a substitute teacher — are covered by the union, not the district.

In Centinela Valley, the district lost at every turn in the legal fight, which played out on the venues of both the Public Employment Relations Board and in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The dispute began with an invoice sent to the union for $312,387, to be paid within 10 days, according to court documents. The district believed that the agreement enshrined in the contract calling for the district to foot the bill for the release time violated the Education Code.

“Our original interpretation was that the union has to pay for some of the release time,” said Cox, who played a role in the case as he was the head of human resources at the time. “Our mistake, if it can be said that we made a mistake, is we believed that since that clause was incompatible with Ed Code, we acted to no longer honor it. ... If you read the PERB decision, it requires we return to the bargaining table with (the Centinela Valley Secondary Teachers Association) and it is our intent to do that.”

According to court documents, Cox and Fernandez threatened to revoke the release time if the union did not pay the $312,000.

When the union refused to pay the amount, the district not only followed through on its promise to revoke the release time, it filed a lawsuit against the union in Superior Court. A few months later, in September 2011, the union filed an unfair labor practice case with the state labor board. In May, the district agreed to drop the lawsuit.

Cox said this was part of a wider effort to make decisions that are more kid-centric in the wake of the scandal surrounding Fernandez’s pay. The union did not agree to drop the unfair labor practice charge.

“The bottom line, from my perspective, is we are trying to do the right thing — to solve all of these old issues,” Cox said. “That’s why we chose to settle the lawsuit.”